Others look up, and with fixed eyes admire That wide-spanned arch, wondering how it was raised, To keep, so high in air, its strength and grace: And by the general reverence God is praised: NOTES. Page 32. "To the Daisy." This Poem, and two others to the same Flower, were written in the year 1802; which is mentioned, because in some of the ideas, though not in the manner in which those ideas are connected, and likewise even in some of the expressions, there is a resemblance to passages in a Poem (lately published) of Mr. Montgomery's, entitled, A Field Flower. This being said, Mr. Montgomery will not think any apology due to him; I cannot, however, help addressing him in the words of the Father of English Poets. "Though it happe me to rehersin That ye han in your freshe songis saied, Sith that ye se I doe it in the honour Of Love, and eke in service of the Flour." Page 46. 1807. "The Seven Sisters." The Story of this Poem is from the German of FREDERICA BRUN. Page 85. "The Wagoner." Several years after the event that forms the subject of the Poem, in company with my friend, the late Mr. Coleridge, I happened to fall in with the person to whom the name of Ben jamin is given. Upon our expressing regret that we had not, for a long time, seen upon the road either him or his wagon, he said. " They could not do without me; and as to the man who was put in my place, no good could come out of him; he was a man of no ideas." The fact of my discarded hero's getting the horses out of a great difficulty with a word, as related in the Poem, was told me by an eyewitness. Page 85. "The buzzing Dor-hawk, round and round, is wheeling." When the Poem was first written the note of the bird was thus described: "The Night-hawk is singing his frog-like tune, but from unwillingness to startle the reader at the outset by so bold a mode of expression, the passage was altered as it now stands. Page 103. After the line, "Can any mortal clog come to her?" followed in the MS. an incident which has been kept back. Part of the suppressed verses shall here be given, as a gratification of pri vate feeling, which the well-disposed reader will find no difficulty in excusing. They are now printed for the first time. 66 Can any mortal clog come to her? It can: But Benjamin, in his vexation, He knows his ground, and hopes to find An upright mural block of stone, Close to the highway, pouring out VOL. II. Its offering from a chink or spout; "Cries Benjamin, 'Where is it, where? Voice it hath none, but must be near.' A star, declining towards the west, Upon the watery surface threw Its image tremulously imprest, That just marked out the object and withdrew: ROCK OF NAMES! Light is the strain, but not unjust Take all in kindness then, as said 26 66 Page 179. Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.” Henry Lord Clifford, &c., &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John Lord Clifford, as is known to the reader of English History, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, son of the Duke of York, who had fallen in the battle, "in part of revenge" (say the Authors of the History of Cumberland and Westmoreland); "for the Earl's father had slain his." A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); but who, as he adds, "dare promise anything temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak." This, no doubt, I would observe by the by, was an action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; "for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this, (say the Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she was born,) that he was the next child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her children, see Austin Vincent, in his Book of Nobility, p. 622, where he writes of them all. It may further be observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only twenty-five years of age, had been a leading man and commander, two or three years together, in the army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be entitled to mercy from his youth. But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the Battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of the Poem, was deprived of his estate and honors during the space of twenty-four years; all which time he lived - |